VOL. XIX. (3) 
THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS 
205 
SALT: ITS ORIGIN, USES AND FOLK-LORE 
By W. ST. CLAIR BADDELEY 
President 
Although we have Salt- ways running through Gloucester- 
shire, they derive their name from Anglo-Saxon workings in 
an adjacent county. The beds are not here. The occurrence 
of Salt-beds is not confined to any one geological horizon. 
They have, for the most part, been formed in a very simple 
manner : namely, by the gradual evaporation of sea-water 
that has become cut-off from sea-communication at various 
periods. Consequently, their age varies with their depth. 
The Spanish beds, near Montserrat, belong to the Cretaceous 
age ; those at Salzburg to the Triassic ; while those in Galicia, 
which have been worked continuously since A.D. 250, belong 
to the Tertiary. The deposits in Britain occur in the basin 
of the river Weaver (Co. Chester), and are there as thick as 
240 feet ; at Droitwich and Stoke Prior (Co. Worcester), at 
Fleetwood (Co. Lancs.), and at Middlesbrough and Hartlepool 
(Co. York). The lake of Utah and the Dead Sea are examples 
of inland bodies of salt-water so highly saline as to support no 
fish-life. Like the Aral Sea, these derive from underlying 
rocks and subsoils of salt, probably of immense thickness. 
There is a Permian bed of Salt near Berlin that is 4,200 feet in 
thickness. As these beds are seldom pure, but are inter- 
mingled with marls and other soils, marketable salt is largely 
obtained (at any rate by us), from heating brine in great pans. 
At a temperature of 165° common salt is formed at the surface 
in crystals, which there collect and sink down, leaving room 
for fresh formations of crystals. Presently the irregular lumps 
thus formed are raked out, put into moulds, then left out to 
drain. Later, these, in turn, arc dried in gentle stoves, and 
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